Bazarov answers this question with complete decisiveness in the affirmative. "If we give Plekhanov's thesis," he writes, "—'consciousness is an internal (? Bazarov) state of matter'—a more satisfactory form, for example, 'every psychic process is a function of a cerebral process,' then neither Mach nor Avenarius will dispute it..." ("Essays 'on' the Philosophy of Marxism," 29).

For a mouse there is no beast stronger than a cat. For Russian empirio-criticists there is no materialist stronger than Plekhanov. Is it really the case that only Plekhanov, or Plekhanov for the first time, put forward the materialist thesis that consciousness is an internal state of matter? And if Bazarov did not like Plekhanov's formulation of materialism, why should one defer to Plekhanov rather than to Engels, rather than to Feuerbach?

Because the empirio-criticists fear to acknowledge the truth. They struggle against materialism while pretending to struggle against Plekhanov: a cowardly and unprincipled method.

But let us turn to empirio-criticism. Avenarius "will not dispute" that thought is a function of the brain. These words of Bazarov contain a direct untruth. Avenarius not only disputes the materialist thesis but creates an entire "theory" for refuting precisely this thesis. "Our brain," says Avenarius in *The Human Conception of the World*, "is not a dwelling-place, seat, creator, is not an instrument or organ, bearer or substrate, etc. of thinking" (p. 76,—cited with sympathy by Mach in *The Analysis of Sensations*, p. 32). "Thinking is not an inhabitant or ruler, half or side, etc., but neither is it a product and not even a physiological function or state of the brain" (ibid.). And no less decisively does Avenarius express himself in his "Remarks": "representations" "are not functions (physiological, psychic, psychophysical) of the brain" (§ 115, p. 419 of the cited article). Sensations are not "psychic functions of the brain" (§ 116).

So, according to Avenarius, the brain is not the organ of thought, thought is not a function of the brain. Let us take Engels, and we shall at once see the directly opposite of this, openly materialist formulations. "Thinking and consciousness," says Engels in *Anti-Dühring*, "are products of the human brain" (p. 22 of the fifth German edition).{25} The same thought is repeated many times in this work. In *Ludwig Feuerbach* we read the following exposition of Feuerbach's views and Engels's views: "that material (stofflich), sensuously perceived world to which we ourselves belong is the only really actual world"; "our consciousness and thinking, however supra-sensuous they may seem, are products (Erzeugnis) of the material, corporeal organ—the brain. Matter is not a product of spirit, but spirit is only the highest product of matter. This, of course, is pure materialism" (4th German edition, p. 18). Or p. 4: the reflection of processes of nature "in the thinking brain"{26} and so on and so forth.

Avenarius rejects this materialist point of view, calling "brain thinking" a "fetishism of natural science" (*The Human Conception of the World*, 2nd German edition, p. 70). Consequently, regarding his decisive divergence on this point with natural science, Avenarius harbors not the slightest illusions. He acknowledges—as do both Mach and all the immanentists—that natural science stands on a spontaneous, unconscious materialist point of view. He acknowledges and directly declares that he diverges absolutely from the "dominant psychology" ("Remarks," p. 150 and many others). This dominant psychology commits an impermissible "introception"—such is the new little word tortured out by our philosopher—that is, the placing of thought into the brain, or of sensations into us. These "two words" (in us = in uns), says Avenarius there, contain that presupposition (Annahme) which empirio-criticism disputes. "This placing (Hineinverlegung) of the visible, etc. into the human being is what we call introception" (p. 153, § 45).

Introception "on principle" departs from the "natural conception of the world" (natürlicher Weltbegriff), saying: "in me" instead of saying "before me" (vor mir, p. 154), "making out of a component part (real) of the environment a component part (ideal) of thinking" (ibid.). "From the non-mechanical" (a new word instead of: psychic), "which freely and clearly manifests itself in the given (or: found by us, im Vorgefundenen), introception makes something mysteriously hiding (latitating,—as Avenarius says 'in a new way') in the central nervous system" (ibid.).

Before us lies the same mystification we have seen in the notorious defense of "naive realism" by empirio-criticists and immanentists. Avenarius acts on the advice of Turgenev's scoundrel{27}: above all one must shout loudest against those vices one is conscious of in oneself. Avenarius tries to make it appear that he is fighting against idealism: supposedly, from introception people usually derive philosophical idealism, transform the external world into sensation, into representation, etc. But I, he says, defend "naive realism," the equal reality of all the given—both the "I" and the environment—without placing the external world into the human brain.

The sophistry here is precisely the same as we observed in the example of the notorious coordination. Diverting the reader's attention with sallies against idealism, Avenarius in fact, in slightly different words, defends the same idealism: thought is not a function of the brain, the brain is not an organ of thought, sensations are not a function of the nervous system; no, sensations are "elements," in one connection only psychic, in another connection (though "identical" elements, but) physical. With new confused terminology, new elaborate little words expressing supposedly a new "theory," Avenarius merely tramped on the same spot and returned to his basic idealist presupposition.

And if our Russian empirio-criticists (for example, Bogdanov) did not notice the "mystification" and perceived a refutation of idealism in the "new" defense of it, then in the analysis of empirio-criticism by specialist-philosophers we encounter a sober evaluation of the essence of Avenarius's ideas, revealed through the elimination of elaborate terminology.

Bogdanov wrote in 1903 (article: "Authoritarian Thinking" in the collection: *From the Psychology of Society*, p. 119 and following):

"Richard Avenarius gave the most systematic and complete philosophical picture of the development of spirit-body dualism. The essence of his 'doctrine of introception' consists in the following" (we observe directly only physical bodies, only by hypothesis concluding about the experiences of others, i.e., about the psychic in another human being). "…The hypothesis is complicated by the fact that the experiences of another person are placed inside his body, are placed (introjected) into his organism. This is already a superfluous hypothesis and even one that generates a mass of contradictions. Avenarius systematically marks these contradictions, unfolding a consecutive series of historical moments in the development of dualism and then of philosophical idealism; but here we have no need to follow Avenarius…". "Introception appears as an explanation of spirit-body dualism."

Bogdanov fell for the bait of professorial philosophy, believing that "introception" is directed against idealism. Bogdanov believed on the word the evaluation of introception given by Avenarius himself, without noticing the sting directed against materialism. Introception denies that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations are a function of the central nervous system of man, i.e., it denies the very elementary truth of physiology for the sake of crushing materialism. The "dualism" turns out to be refuted idealistically (despite all of Avenarius's diplomatic indignation against idealism), because sensation and thought turn out to be not secondary, not derivative from matter, but primary. Dualism is refuted here by Avenarius only insofar as the existence of an object without a subject, of matter without thought, of an external world independent of our sensations is "refuted" by him, i.e., refuted idealistically: the absurd denial that the visual image of a tree is a function of my retina, my nerves and my brain was needed by Avenarius to buttress the theory of the "inseparable" connection of "complete" experience, including both our "I" and the tree, i.e., the environment.

The doctrine of introception is a confusion that smuggles in idealist nonsense and contradicts natural science, which unwaveringly stands on the fact that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations, i.e., images of the external world, exist in us, produced by the action of things upon our sense organs. Materialist elimination of the "dualism of spirit and body" (i.e., materialist monism) consists in the fact that spirit does not exist independently of the body, that spirit is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the external world. Idealist elimination of the "dualism of spirit and body" (i.e., idealist monism) consists in the fact that spirit is not a function of the body, that spirit is, consequently, primary, that the "environment" and the "I" exist only in the inseparable connection of one and the same "complexes of elements." Apart from these two directly opposite ways of eliminating the "dualism of spirit and body," there cannot be any third way, unless one counts eclecticism, i.e., senseless confusion of materialism and idealism. It is precisely this confusion in Avenarius that seemed to Bogdanov and Co. "truth beyond materialism and idealism."

But specialist-philosophers are not as naive and credulous as Russian empirio-criticists. True, each of these gentlemen, ordinary professors, defends "his own" system for refuting materialism or, at least, for "reconciling" materialism and idealism,—but in relation to competitors they ruthlessly expose the incoherent bits of materialism and idealism in all manner of "newest" and "original" systems. If several young intellectuals fell for Avenarius's bait, the old sparrow Wundt was not taken in with chaff. The idealist Wundt very rudely tore the mask off the mountebank Avenarius, praising him for the anti-materialist tendency of the doctrine of introception.

"If empirio-criticism," wrote Wundt, "reproaches vulgar materialism for expressing through such formulas as: the brain 'has' thought or 'produces' thinking a relation which cannot in general be established through factual observation and description" (for W. Wundt a "fact" must apparently be that man thinks without the aid of the brain!), "…then this reproach is, of course, well-founded" (cited article, p. 47–48).

Well, of course! Against materialism idealists will always side with semi-Aven ariuses and Machs! Only it is unfortunate, adds Wundt, that this theory of introception "stands in no connection whatsoever with the doctrine of the independent vital series, being evidently only subsequently affixed to this doctrine from outside in a rather artificial manner" (p. 365).

Introception, says O. Ewald, "is nothing but a fiction of empirio-criticism, necessary to it for covering up its errors" (op. cit., 44). "We observe a strange contradiction: on the one hand, the elimination of introception and the restoration of the natural conception of the world is supposed to return the world the character of living reality; on the other hand, through the principle of coordination empirio-criticism leads to a purely idealist theory of absolute correlation between the opposing term and the central term. Avenarius thus moves in a circle. He set out on a campaign against idealism and laid down his weapons before idealism on the eve of open warfare with it. He wanted to liberate the world of objects from the power of the subject,—and again bound this world to the subject. What he actually critically destroys is a caricature of idealism, not the genuinely correct epistemological expression of it" (op. cit., 64–65).

"The often-cited saying of Avenarius," says Norman Smith, "that the brain is neither a seat, nor an organ, nor a bearer of thought, is a denial of the only terms which we possess for defining the relation between the two" (cited article, p. 30).

It is not surprising either that the theory of introception, approved by Wundt, arouses the sympathy of the openly spiritualist James Ward[55], who wages systematic war against "naturalism and agnosticism," especially against T. Huxley (not for the reason that he was an insufficiently definite and resolute materialist, which Engels reproached him for, but) for the reason that under his agnosticism there was essentially hidden materialism.

Let us note that the English empirio-criticist K. Pearson, ignoring all philosophical tricks, recognizing neither introception, nor coordination, nor the "discovery of the elements of the world," obtains the inevitable result of empirio-criticism, devoid of such "covers," namely: pure subjective idealism. Pearson knows of no "elements." "Sense-impressions"—his first and last word. He does not doubt in the slightest that man thinks with the aid of the brain. And the contradiction between this thesis (the only one corresponding to science) and the starting point of his philosophy remained exposed, glaring. Pearson rages, waging war against the concept of matter as something existing independently of our sense-impressions (ch. VII of his *Grammar of Science*). Repeating all of Berkeley's arguments, Pearson declares that matter is nothing. But when it comes to the relation of brain to thought, Pearson decisively declares: "From will and consciousness, connected with a material mechanism, we cannot infer anything similar to will and consciousness without this mechanism."[56] Pearson even puts forward a thesis as the conclusion of the corresponding part of his investigations: "Consciousness has no meaning beyond a nervous system akin to ours; it is illogical to assert that all matter is conscious" (but logical to suppose that all matter possesses a property essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection), "still more illogical to assert that consciousness or will exists outside matter" (ibid., p. 75, thesis 2). The confusion in Pearson is crying! Matter is nothing other than groups of sense-impressions; this is his premise; this is his philosophy. Consequently, sensation and thought—primary; matter—secondary. No, consciousness does not exist without matter and even supposedly without a nervous system! I.e., consciousness and sensation turn out to be secondary. Water on earth, earth on a whale, whale on water. Mach's "elements," Avenarius's coordination and introception in no way eliminate this confusion but only obscure the matter, sweep away the traces through learned-philosophical gibberish.

Such gibberish, about which it is sufficient to say two words, is the special terminology of Avenarius, who created an endless abundance of various "notals," "securals," "fidentials," and so on and so forth. Our Russian empirio-criticists modestly pass over this professorial nonsense for the most part, only rarely firing at the reader (for stunning effect) with some "existential" etc. But if naive people take these little words for a special biomechanics, German philosophers—themselves lovers of "wise" words—laugh at Avenarius. Whether one says "notal" (notus = known) or says that such-and-such is known to me is completely all the same, says Wundt in a paragraph headed: "The Scholastic Character of the Empirio-critical System." And indeed, this is pure and hopeless scholasticism. One of Avenarius's most faithful disciples, R. Willy, had the courage to confess this frankly. "Avenarius dreamed of a biomechanics," he says, "but one can arrive at an understanding of the life of the brain only through factual discoveries, and not by the method which Avenarius attempted. Avenarius's biomechanics is not based on any new observations whatsoever; its distinguishing feature is purely schematic constructions of concepts; and such constructions that do not even have the character of hypotheses opening up a certain perspective,—these are mere speculative stencils (blosse Spekulierschablonen), which, like a wall, block the view into the distance from us."[57]

Russian empirio-criticists will soon turn out to be like fashion lovers who are delighted with a hat already worn out by European bourgeois philosophers.